


Cracked and Hollow

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Cunnilingus, Established Relationship, F/F, Light Bondage, Oral Sex, Rope Bondage, Spanking, Strap-Ons, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 03:56:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9105652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Luhk ducks low as she enters the doorway, sets her pack to the worn carpet with a heavy thump. Scuffs her boots along the once-costly rug. Old World luxuries don’t mean a damn these days, but power always makes itself known.She wears authority like an old coat, but here she can take it off, out of that choking red Cloud and in the yellow-lit lamps of the casino.“Got a souvenir for you,” she says, voice rough. Like there’s cinders in her throat.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dilemmasovernothing](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dilemmasovernothing).



Luhk ducks low as she enters the doorway, sets her pack to the worn carpet with a heavy thump. Scuffs her boots along the once-costly rug. Old World luxuries don’t mean a damn these days, but power always makes itself known. 

She wears authority like an old coat, but here she can take it off, out of that choking red Cloud and in the yellow-lit lamps of the casino.

“Got a souvenir for you,” she says, voice rough. Like there’s cinders in her throat.

Christine closes the program on her screen with one last click on the keyboard, cracking her knuckles with elaborate ease. “Better be good.” Her voice is soft, nonchalant. She doesn’t startle at her own voice, not anymore— doesn’t duck or flinch at the unexpected sound, at the dead woman’s words off her living lips. She must get precious little chance to use it, with only holograms and ghosts for company. Hard enough having conversations with yourself when you don’t answer, even harder when it feels like someone else answering.

Luhk drinks her in with her eyes, heart welling. Some heavy ache starts to lift, like a hunger carried so long she forgot it gnawed. Christine’s still too thin by Luhk’s reckoning, but at least she’s got more weight than last they met, her cheeks less gaunt. The Madre’s been kind to her.

Time has been less kind to Luhk. She took down three armies— should wear that as trophy, victory knots braided around her neck, but victory’s a heavy weight to bear. She doesn’t look in the mirror much, but knows she has new lines around her eyes, new silver in her hair. Left her cracked and hollow, like a geode.

Just hopes she still glitters enough to draw Christine.

“Always good for you,” Luhk says, and it should be warm, teasing, but her tongue’s like wet ash. She crouches by the door, unbuckling her pack and pulling out a fist-sized lump swaddled in cloth. She unwraps it slowly, reverently, doesn’t bother getting up as Christine walks close. Holds up her offering, flat, in the palm of her hand, her knee resting on the worn carpet.

Christine brushes her thumb along the edge of Luhk’s hand, fine callus against ochre skin. “Thought you had enough prewar trinkets.” She lifts the snowglobe, tilts it to watch the glitter swirl. It settles over the miniature skyline in silver, brightening up all the hard lines of dingy reality. Easier to accept this tiny glitz and glitter for what it is than to think about the work that made it.

“If I can’t take you to Vegas, I’m taking Vegas to you,” Luhk says, grinning. “‘Smine now anyway.” She knows it's a broken-moon smile, a new scar gracing the edge of her mouth. It still twists her lips odd, a thin line of keloid tugging on the edges.

Christine grimaces. She gets the news on her staticky radio out here, too. “How’s it feel to be the big boss?”

Luhk snorts. “Not worth a damn thing. I just deliver the mail.” She lets out a deep sigh, bone-weary. Painted grey in every corner. “Everyone wants something. Know better than to challenge me direct, but they’re scavengers. Just waiting for a piece.”

“And you can afford to leave the city?”

“Got Yes Man linked up with Julie, figure they can run things for now. Between them, the bots, and Lily reminding everyone to play nice, I figure they got it under control.”

“And how’s Veronica?”

Luhk crooks her lips, lopsided smile spilling sideways. “She’s good. Settling in with the Followers. Gave me a letter for you too.” She tucks her hand to her chest, pulls out a crumpled paper packet, folded in on itself to make its own envelope. “But god, I missed you.” The exhaustion sags heavy on her bones, lines her words in lead.

Christine takes the letter, putting it in the same hand as the snowglobe, then touches Luhk’s cheek. Palm flat against the jaw, thumb stroking just beneath Luhk’s eye. So close that Luhk feels her heat, smells the sour tang of old sweat and faded Abraxo.

“Tired?” Christine asks.

Luhk groans. “Tired of being the big boss in Vegas.”

Christine runs her hand beneath the chin, fingers trailing across Luhk’s throat. “Want to feel small and squirmy?”

“Please.” Little more than a whisper, eyes shut. Breath scraping the back of her throat on shaky exhale.

“Good thing I prepared,” Christine says, and she bends to kiss Luhk’s forehead. Luhk opens her eyes as Christine walks away, setting down the globe and the letter on the desk, and returns with a faded white rope. Once-white, worn grey with use and washing. Already coiled into a familiar knot, a Prusik head with the tails threaded back through to form the hitch. It leaves two loops above the body of the knot, a promise of supple curves and Luhk raises her hands— like prayer, like pleading, palms cupped and wrists inches apart, close enough to feel the static heat of her own body— as Christine slips the loops over them into simple cuffs.

Luhk breathes in. Out. Lets herself feel the compression of chest and lungs, holds herself silent as Christine pulls the tails, tightening the loops and slipping her finger against Luhk’s wrist to gauge pressure.

“Stay with me. Let me know if it’s too tight,” Christine murmurs.

Luhk runs her tongue across her dry lips, tasting salt and dust. “Okay.”

“You want to be quiet?” Christine asks, crossing the rope over itself as she ties it into an overhand knot. Simple, firm; snug against the cuffs to lock them in place.

“Mhm.”

“Okay. So if you say ‘no,’ or ‘stop,’ I’ll stop. Promise,” Christine says, a smile that cracks her scars into lines like a map, all harsh cartography and patterned keloid. Luhk thinks she can follow those roads into past and present, maybe even track them into some shared future— but corrals herself to this moment. This now. No jumped-up thugs lobbying for a piece of her, no wasteland creatures hissing for their next meal. Just her breath, her body, Christine’s hands and the rope leashing her wrists. Helpless, but by choice.

So Christine leads, tugs, and Luhk follows like a dry leaf on the breeze. Dirty boots scuffing across carpet once meant for the rich and idle, choke-dust thick. All lights and glory long-gone, unlike the glittering illusions of Vegas. There’s something honest in this, the faded grandeur of the prewar age. No longer pretending to be anything but weary.

Christine sits on the edge of the bed, springs creaking beneath her scant weight, and Luhk kneels before Christine in worship. Unfastens Christine’s belt, hands clumsy with reverence, the leash slack in Christine’s hands as she lifts her hips, shimmies her pants down and off her ankles. A little more fumbling with the boots, working in tandem— and Christine’s hands look so strange, patchwork-stained rust and grey with Cloud and gunpowder, next to Luhk’s ink-blotted thumbs, the fine speckles of New Vegas legislature.

(God, she’d love to burn that paperwork, call it a tyrant’s pyre and let it be. But Vegas never worked well on chaos alone; too many warring families and simmering hostility. Arcade says they’ll build it better, build it right, but Luhk’s afraid it’ll mean her bones in the mortar.)

When Christine leans back, knees spread, Luhk delves into the safety of her thighs. Presses her cheek against the warm throb of Christine’s flesh, nuzzles her cheek against the soft crinkles of pubic hair, breathes deep. Tin-sweetness and musk, sharp and full. She presses her hands on the bed, in the warm junction of Christine’s legs, and leans on her forearms. Kisses the slope of Christine’s belly, the divot of her thigh, the swell of her pubic mound. Trails want and reverence, sets her heart aflame. Like incense for bad omens, something to chase out the grey wanness of her spirit. There’s pleasure in the giving, but Christine’s pleasure is a gift in turn— soft sighs and muffled grunts, groans clenched behind her teeth, biting her lip as Luhk casts her gaze upward. Christine’s face is pink and shining, eyes clenched. Glory in the making.

So Luhk licks, laps, nuzzles. Trails her tongue in long curves, elegant script to write what her clumsy hands cannot. Lines and logograms of desire, tracing meaning across skin. She curls her fingers, knuckles resting at the curve of Christine’s buttocks, the transition zone of ass and thighs, buries herself in warm serenity. All her goals simplify, crystallize to one warm and glowing truth: she loves Christine. She will please Christine. She will make Christine come, and come, until all their words are burnt like paper prayers, her tongue slick across the dark curve of the labia, nose brushing the swell of Christine’s clit, blunting her teeth with lips and nibbling a starburst path along the pale canvas of Christine’s thighs, until Christine reaches down and twists her hands in Luhk’s hair, tugs Luhk into place with a white-burst prickle of scalp and hair, and Luhk wraps her mouth over Christine’s clit. Lavishes a broad stroke of her tongue across that wet opening, curls up and prods the hood of Christine’s clit with the tip of her tongue, flicks hard and fast and doesn’t let up, not even when Christine clenches her thighs around Luhk’s head, smothering her skin-deaf and warm and screaming, screaming, screaming—

“No. _Stop_ ,” Christine says, voice weak and without command, but Luhk stops. Sex and slick are smeared down her lips, her chin wet with it. She presses a wet-moon kiss to Christine’s thigh before rising to her feet.

Christine lays back, limp and languid, limbs puddled wide and chest heaving. Sweat sticking the straps of her shirt to her skin, her nipples hard and swollen beneath the thin fabric. Shoulders hard, wiry, her biceps taut with trembling muscle. “Think you earned a spanking?”

Luhk nods, hope spun silver-thin and fragile. She keeps her arms down, hands down, not daring to give the slightest tug on the leash around her wrists. Her heart drums, steady. Deep and smooth. She can sink into this silence, this warmth. Break herself down to flesh and bone. Pour copper prayers from her mouth, tongue singing red hymns.

Christine chuckles, shoving herself up on her elbow, dropping her heels to the floor with a soft thump on the carpet. “Silence suits me fine.” She undresses Luhk slowly, a friction of skin on leather, unbuckling her belt with a lazy grace that leaves Luhk shivering in anticipation. A doll-like helplessness, Christine only bothering to drop the trousers until they’re down Luhk’s knees, shackling her legs in a tangle of cloth. “Come here.” She pats her bare thigh. 

Luhk kneels on the bed— too late, thinks she should have taken her boots off, but she can’t undo her own boots without assistance, and Christine doesn’t complain. So Luhk settles her hips over Christine’s lap, bends her knees and wriggles forward on her bound arms, pressing them under her chest. Head tilted forward, forehead resting on the blanket. Limbs sagging into the mattress, belly soft, slung over Christine’s knees. Bare skin on bare skin, electricity prickling between them. No need to force a stony facade, here, no need to jut herself bigger and harder than she needs to be; she is not the cliff to stand strong, nor the flint to strike steel. She is herself, and must only endure what is willingly taken.

Christine’s palm strikes hard and sharp on the lower swell of Luhk’s buttocks. No warm-up, only a red smack of pain. Luhk smothers her gasp into the blankets, locks her fists tight as the next blow lands. Softer, this time; scaling down, lulling her into a steady rhythm of impact. Blows evenly spaced, overlapping between one cheek, the the other, down the thighs, up the round curve of the ass. Stinging her flesh awake, breaking her into this present moment. No thought beyond sensation, no strength beyond feeling. Hard red pain washing through the grey wan corners of her being. No checkered past, no fragile future. Only the blood tingling through her, rising on her skin. Sweat beading the back of her neck, her breath caught in bursts behind her teeth.

There is peace in the certainty of Christine’s rhythm, a meditation in flesh. Luhk remembers to breathe in through her nostrils, makes sure to hit her exhale when Christine’s on the downswing. No ugly groans or yelps to mar the pulse of their skin, hard smacks and breath. Pure percussion; it resonates through her, rattles her lungs. Every inch of flesh a drum.

Even her own arousal’s a distant thing, something catalogued, remote from the warm float of metered pain. Something Luhk is only peripherally aware of: the slickness dripping down her legs, her cunt puffy and aching when Christine passes her palm over the apex of her thighs. Radiant heat there, melting from her core. Luhk imagines it as a coal, something low and burning. It could be stoked to full flame, if Christine chooses, but even that’s not necessary. Christine holds the leash, and Luhk follows.

“Luhk, are you with me?” Christine asks, and it’s as if through a dust-shimmer haze, words distorted.

Luhk manages to nod, then to rasp her voice in response. “Yes.”

“You’re going still, not squirmy. Is that okay?” Christine asks, pressing her hand over the red-heat tingle of tender skin, sweeping down as if brushing water after a bath. As if the pain is liquid, transient, as if it can be moved through the power of her will, bottled up and stored for some future time.

Luhk would treasure that pain, anoint herself in it like some holy rite or secret baptism. She rose from the grave, but it’s Christine who brings her to life. “Yes.” Monosyllables are the best she can manage, and English has no tones to distinguish meaning. One further limit on her speech, even though her skin sings praise in every nerve.

“I want to fuck you,” Christine says, voice rough, that singer’s sweetness cast dark and low. “Three more hits, hard as I can, then fucking. Sounds good?”

Luhk near-melts with the relief of it, the thought of Christine on top of her, bodies pressed, every inch of them in sweat-slick contact. “Yes.”

Christine tenses, her hand splayed on Luhk’s back, between the shoulders. The rope trails across Luhk’s damp shirt in a whisper of friction, and Luhk feels Christine’s thighs tighten beneath her, so she braces herself for the impact before Christine hits hard, fast, staccato— triplet-strike, faster than before, less than a breath between spanks and laying fresh pain over red skin, no time for the shock to pass.

Strangely, that hurts less. The pain blurs and runs into itself, no chance for anticipation or relief. Luhk’s thoughts ring clear and bright, oddly suspended. A moment of perfect clarity, mind quiet amidst the thunder-claps.

Christine trails her hand down the cleft of Luhk’s buttocks, touches a finger to Luhk’s damp pubic hair. “God but you’re wet.”

“Mhm,” Luhk manages, tongue slick, too thick for her mouth. Still awash in sensation, responses muddled.

“I should try spanking your pussy next time,” Christine chuckles, dragging her fingers through Luhk’s wet folds before drawing back. She smacks her lips with a wet sound, like sucking her fingers, before ordering, “Slide off my lap.”

Luhk obeys, limbs clumsy but willing as she scoots forward on her arms, half-crawling and half-sliding off Christine’s lap. The rope chafes as it passes her shoulders, and Christine gives a little more slack, patting Luhk’s ass. It still stings, a prickle-flare of heat over the fresh spanking, and Luhk buries her face in the blanket with a deep sigh. She closes her eyes, listening to the leather-on-leather rustle of Christine’s harness and the familiar slick-wet sound of lube being rubbed over the toy.

Christine positions herself above Luhk, one hand to Luhk’s hip and tilting her hips. The head of the toy presses between Luhk’s lips, and Luhk spreads her knees, rocking her weight onto her chest and forearms. Christine slots her body along Luhk’s, legs brushing parallel, and eases the dildo into Luhk’s body. She moves slow, gentle, matching the rhythm of Luhk’s breath. There’s hardly any resistance, between the lube and Luhk’s own arousal, and toys have always been more about intimacy than size, between them. When Christine’s body meets Luhk’s, when her hips meet against Luhk’s ass, that’s another connection, another red flare of heat and warm agony. Like a low fire, burning slow, it spreads warmth all through Luhk’s body, tingles its way down her thighs and into her toes.

Luhk bites her lip, shoulders tense, forearms straining apart. She’s not truly trying to break her shackles, but grounding herself. This is restraint, this is presence. This is love, this is _Christine_ , Christine’s hand on her shoulder, Christine’s weight above her, bouncing against her ass, her thighs, a wet slap of skin and the mattress quaking beneath them. Christine’s so small, really, but still forceful— she bounces, ricochets, uses acceleration to make up for lack of mass. It’s a different kind of impact, bodies slamming, Luhk’s ass red-sore-aching and her cunt wet-hungry-dripping for each thrust of the toy, her clit grinding into the blankets with a pleasingly indirect pressure before Christine slides a hand down, knuckles catching against the worn blankets and her fingers raking through soaked curls to rub Luhk’s clit.

The spanking was a slow build, despite the hard strikes, but this, this, _this_ is release, all her nerves lit up like fireworks, sparkle-clustered explosions along each touch of skin, every place their bodies meet, like they flare bright enough to blaze everything else asunder—

Luhk’s orgasm is a keening thing, muffled into the mattress, the blanket sodden beneath her mouth and her body gone tension-tight to a boneless collapse of sweat.

Christine tugs her hand from under Luhk’s body, rubbing her shoulder as she slows her hips. “Luhk? You done?”

“Mhm.”

Christine slides out from Luhk, rolling beside her and kissing her shoulders, her neck, the skin behind her ear. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, something Luhk can follow home. “How are you feeling?”

“Good.”

“I’m going to untie your wrists now, and we’re going to cuddle. Okay?”

“Mhm.”

Christine sets her hand on Luhk’s shoulder, rolling her aside, and Luhk allows it. Christine undoes the cuffs slowly, kissing the red marks left on Luhk’s skin. Small chafings, almost lost beneath the miscellaneous other small scars and nicks of a busy life, but still worthy of attention. They’re souvenirs in flesh, no less precious because they’re transient. Luhk and Christine have exchanged stories before, scar for scar, from faded white marks to livid red swells of keloid, but they’re from past adventures, old chapters now closed.

For now… Luhk cracks her eyes open, kisses the tip of Christine’s nose. She snorts as Christine’s dildo bumps against her thigh, batting at it with one hand. “Take that off.”

Christine laughs, sitting up to unfasten the straps.

As she undresses, Luhk’s gaze drifts past Christine, the miniature Vegas snowglobe still glittering, the glass cool and shining in the low light. They still can’t let go entirely, not yet. Christine refuses to leave the Madre, and Luhk couldn’t help bringing New Vegas with her.

At least in this they are united, bodies and sweat and cooling touch. When Christine slides next to Luhk, slotting her body next to Luhk’s, her knee over Luhk’s hip, her scarred arms over Luhk’s shoulder, Luhk turns towards her. Tilts her head, foreheads touching. Breath mingling slow and deep.

Their domains are separate, but not impossibly so. They cross over like this, bridge the gap with breath and care. Leave behind dirty memories and small presents. Thread-worn passage between worlds, until they can finally stitch themselves together.

Luhk breathes deep, watching the last few flakes of silver fall in that small globe, and closes her eyes.


End file.
